A few weeks ago at ArtRage Gallery, REAL co-sponsored a program with the National Women's Law Students Association. The topic was an analysis of where our community, and the rest of the country, stands following the Nov. 6 election.

We were asked: Was a national conversation inspired by the months leading up to the election in which issues such as reproductive rights, rape, abortion, birth control and equal pay were in the news every day?

Invited to participate, I confess I thought no one would come. I restrained myself from calling my friends and colleagues, asking them to attend.

My invitations were not necessary. There was standing room only.

After Roe v. Wade — when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 — I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not.

The modern Republican Party put judicial issues near the top of its agenda. The stated priority is to end the right to choose abortion.

This creates a situation where appointments to the Supreme Court and to the lower federal courts are of key importance.

For example, Gonzales v. Carhart was the challenge to the Supreme Court of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. I don’t know what a “partial birth” abortion is, but Justice Anthony Kennedy did. Chief Justice John Roberts assigned him to write the opinion. He wrote:

“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child. The Act recognizes this reality as well. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision. While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.”

In his book “The Oath,” published in September, Jeffrey Toobin writes: “...Kennedy’s rhetoric was straight out of the anti-abortion movement. He referred to the fetus as a ‘baby’ and a ‘child.’ The obstetricians and gynecologists who performed the procedures were ‘abortion doctors.’

“... Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg had devoted her life to fighting this kind of patronizing reasoning.

“In her dissent, she wrote that Kennedy’s opinion rested ‘on ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution – ideas that have long since been discredited.’

“... she took on Kennedy’s claim that, in her words, ‘having an abortion is any more dangerous to a woman’s long-term mental health than delivering and parenting a child that she did not intend to have.’ Kennedy’s assertion was based on junk science, she said, proving her point with a 400-word footnote summarizing the actual scholarly research about women who had had abortions.”

The rhetoric the candidates are urged to use stays away from opposition to legal abortion. It is: “I am in favor of states’ rights.” Do I think this is a smoke screen? Yes.

How did abortion and birth control impact the congressional race of Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle or the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?

I don’t know. But I think the so-called social issues were front and center in the minds of voters. These issues may indeed have lost the Republicans some elections.

Thinking about politics over the decades there are some lessons, especially for the members of REAL:
» Patience. Don’t expect progress overnight.
» Rationalism. Be polite when speaking to opponents. This may or may not be the common denominator in voting behavior.
» Stay the course. If history is on your side, don’t give up. Eventually the others will catch up with you.

This is the lesson from the suffrage fight. When the suffragists were stopped at the state level, they went to the federal level. When they were stopped at the federal level, they went back to the state level. They kept it up: 56 state referendum campaigns, 480 legislative campaigns, 470 state constitutional campaigns, 277 state party campaigns, 30 national party conventions, 19 sessions of Congress.

One has to have energy.

Karen DeCrow, an attorney and author from Jamesville, is in the National Women's Hall of Fame and writes an occasional column for The Post-Standard. For details about REAL, contact Lindsay Speicher, 585-730-9772.